To protect the privacy of the individuals depicted, some names and identifying details have been changed.

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Spring 2025

Your whole life story is in that backpack and you hand it to me one page at a time. Your toxicology report, your birth certificate, psych evaluation, social security card. The gray elastic band of your underwear is sticking out of your jeans that for some reason you forgot to button /fasten /close – and your bright, white sneakers are untied; bald headed – both ears pierced,  you say, “Sometimes I spend the whole day in Target – sometimes Macy’s Herald Square” – I know you hate taking the subway on the weekends – I know you eat ice cream to distract yourself from trouble – you tell me you have to take four hot showers when you get home because you feel twisted and you FaceTime with your sister because you’re afraid of being alone. You won’t go out Friday or Saturday night – you live in a basement apartment and stare out on to a sidewalk – you smoke Newport 100s – you speak in double negatives – “no not more worse” – but you’ve gotten by so far – and you tell me you have never gone to the doctor. You borrowed my blue pen to write down three things that give you pleasure – you had been asked to write three things on a pink post it note – your counselor suggests pickleball, you glare and say cheeseburgers. The counselor tries to look thoughtful and says you’re not allowed to name foods. We are all the same in this horrible room, in this misshapen circle – all of us idiots who can barely make a list of three pleasurable things.

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Crack for Crack

Augie, who wants to be called Eric, has knife scars on both sides of his face – I lean in to look closely and the lights go out – he stomps his feet and says they are motion sensitive – oh – Augie asks, “Do you like looking at me?” His eyes are purple with silver circling the rims – he says he found four of his five sisters on ancestry. com – “we all have the same father, but different mothers”- both his shoes are untied – and he’s wearing a baseball cap with a blue rag hanging out of the back – like Lawerence of Arabia – he tells me he used to be like Pookie from New Jack City, I tell him I loved that movie – he says he loves crack – he sold crack to buy crack – he once had 6 months off crack and now he has 4 days – Augie went to prison at 16 years old – I ask why he didn’t go to juvenile detention and he says “I went to adult prison for an adult crime” – he was in for 24 years – now he’s living in a shelter in East Rockaway – he can walk to his probation officer and his mother is nearby. He says, “see this ring” – a thick silver ring on his left hand – “try to get it off” – I start pulling on it and can’t get it over his knuckle – “if you get it off you’re mine” – all the truly romantic things happen with the wrong guys at the wrong time – he asks me to guess his age – this goes on for a while and I have to make sure I am getting it wrong in a way that flatters him – the scars on his face are so deep – beneath his eyes – down his cheeks – blacker than his black skin – the lights go out again and we walk out into the hall – he’s too thin and shorter than me – but he seems happier than when he arrived this afternoon.

This afternoon we watched Sean cry – Sean with a four-leaf clover on his neck and white-blonde hair – whose wife had a seizure on Livingston Street – tells us he used to snort suboxone and sell SSI checks – and cigarettes and curly fries – he lives with his mother-in-law somewhere in Queens. 

Elias sat next to me during art therapy – showed me a tattoo on his stomach –  a skull for the day of the dead – his shirt was in one hand as he pointed to the skin between his ribs and he told me how much it hurt. He was drawing two mountains that he wanted to top with snowflakes but there was no white paint – I told him I liked it anyway. 

At the end of the day a co-worker and I  talk about Yusef Hawkins and Bensonhurst and Bayside and Bed-Stuy –  NYC in 1989 – we talk about Al Sharpton and his weight fluctuation – she tells me too much about herself – she uses the N-word but she’s not black – which makes me uncomfortable but I don’t talk– maybe it’s ok if she speaks real fast.

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Sam is a Girl’s Name

Yesterday my director asked what I’d been doing all day – I guess not much – a girl came into my office to tell me about her haircut and the 12 times she’s been hospitalized and then she turned around to show me 12 red lines that looked like a bar code tattooed on the nape of her neck – her left wrist had a long vertical scar on it where the torn skin had been ripped apart and stitched back together – she told me about going to the farmers market with her grandma and buying fresh corn – growing up in Stuy-Town with her older brother who is now an amateur body builder – her father split and moved to the Bronx, her mother – disappointed – moved to New Jersey – the girl lives with her wife in Maspeth- it took her an hour to get to The Center – she shows me poems she has written on her phone – lists the medication she is taking – talks about weight gain and dying her hair blonde – asks me to come to a reading in Chelsea – waits with me at the elevator – asks me to follow her on Instagram. 

Yesterday a client told me he will never use K2 again because he saw the devil seven times – seven !!! – he said he should stick to crack – it’s weird what people are experts in – a young girl whispered to me during group that people dig up the dead somewhere in Africa and eat the bones and dirt and shoes and filth – one of the men in group quoted the Bible, “Don’t grow weary in doing good” he repeated it over and over “I won’t grow weary – I won’t grow weary”  – I won’t, I’ll try.

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Ex-ex

The ex-convict from Dannemora prison asks me out for lunch at the Halal cart – he goes to the gym at 4 a.m. – gets to class before the doors open – tells the students to “never mind” me – passes his 929 towards me – tells me his schedule at Dannemora: chow time – first bell – rec room – for 30 years. After Dannemora, he was transferred to Sing Sing. He loiters in the doorway of my office during class. He tells me his mother died while he was in prison. Says his son won’t speak to him. He’s on a waiting list to get a room in the Bronx. He limps when he walks and, in my office, he sits and takes off one shoe. I like that he feels so comfortable. He hands me a granola bar and tells me he bought his first suit. At his class graduation, he confides in me and tells me why he was sent to prison. I wish I hadn’t given him my phone number. 

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Dorinda

Dorinda used to live in Hotel 17, an SRO on the East Side – she sat with me in the waiting room- she said her depression had lifted and listed her new cocktail of medication – there’s no way she’s telling the truth – a bag beside her holds a clean needle and a red capped cup for a urine test – I hear her story about the laundry room being padlocked for over 3 months – the mound of dirty clothing in the closest – the man she has been married to for 37 years who bathed her with a sponge in a bucket in their squat on the Bowery. She moved from Queens to Brooklyn to Manhattan – she tells me she smoked angel dust at the Bronx Zoo – she thought she was dead during the car ride home – the dashboard looked like a grave – she’s old now and her flesh hangs like a yellowing lace draped from her chin to her collarbone – and her boots are tall, black, leather platforms – they look out of place on her swollen legs and I don’t think she can steady herself on them – her hair is dyed manic panic electric blue – her eyebrows are inked on with a black sharpie – crosshatching in permanent ink – and her eye shadow is highlighter yellow – she drew on eye liner with magic marker – her face is powder white –  it could be peeled off like dried glue – she tells me about her fear of the dark, of the woods, of nature, of wildlife – bears and possums – the list goes on and now I’m laughing – her eyes yellow, her eyes are brown – her insurance form is wrinkled on the floor beside her boot – I glance at the clock – I could sit here all day listening – next time I see Dorinda in the waiting room she doesn’t recognize me – I wave  “hello” to the wall and feel kind of stupid.

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Esme, with Love

Esme wears too much eyeliner – black half circles inside the wet flesh of her eyelids – she’s pouting in a way she learned from the movies – it isn’t sexy, it’s just sullen – the kind of expression that might make a psychologist curious and diagnose her with Border Line Personality Disorder. She is sitting in the corner of group next to the portable air filter – there’s a notebook and pen in her lap – she asks me a question about the question our supervisor asked – I tell her he asked what we are grateful for- she says, “I hate it here. It’s too much work.” – she must not have been awake to hear one of the patients tell us the difference between food banks and SNAP – she must not have heard about fresh eggs and shrimp in bulk. 

Esme’s fingers are wrapped around her iPhone like it’s a feeding tube keeping her satiated until the end of group when she will get up and clock out and search for another job. I ask her if she has read the Salinger story. She says “no”, but she was named after it and she absolutely hates it – I think it’s romantic in an attention seeking kinda way . 

Another client shares about a cold he can’t get rid of – I can hear his sinuses struggle as he takes a swing of cold brew coffee and another from a bottle of fruit punch Gatorade – at the end of the day I see him slumped in the waiting room – he’s wearing a skull cap and sweating  – I would stay and check his temperature, but so far every day is long and the elevator has arrived.

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Turmeric and Peptides

Everyone in group asks Dan about the coming storm – he tells them you can’t predict Thursday’s weather on a Monday – of course the clients want to know if The Center will be closed. 

Dan was a weatherman for CBS news – Channel 2 – he lost his job because of crystal meth, and he is triggered by the Friday movie, which was picked from a list the clients have accumulated during the year. And we might not get to watch it because Diane stole the popcorn and went running through the hallway and Danielle – the head counselor – had to chase her down – and when she caught Diane a squabble ensued about her “black ass” and “prison-guard-like” ways. Diane has always been a difficult client. She’s 5’2” and her limbs are too short for her body. She never takes off her coat and always brings a suitcase to group. Her weave is crooked. Her bangs cover her eyes and the hair that stops at her chin is always lopsided – she’s lopsided – she says she teaches bible study to children and during group it is easy to offend her. She raises both stubby arms and says, “Not today, Satan, not today!” 

• Dan says everyone asks him about the weather; for the rest of his life, he will provide commentary on forecasts.
• Mario tells the group about the dental care he got at NYU – his face is swollen and he has new teeth. 
• Anthony sells blood twice a day – $50 in the morning – $60 in the late afternoon
• Lawrence cut off his ankle bracelet and left it in New Jersey so he could be free in The Bronx.
• Lucy has a tattoo of an Ewok that covers most of her left forearm. She has a service dog named Nachos – he lies beneath her desk.
• Sherry talks about a recipe for a smoothie: peptides and turmeric – the concoction keeps her looking young. In sweatpants she is beautiful. When she leaves the room the group debates whether or not she has implants in her ass. When she returns, the room is silent. Sherry mumbles that she sometimes misses prison.

I take the 1 train to Rector Street and walk towards the water – crossing the highway on a foot bridge, I see Timothy in front of the building, and I ask him to walk with me to 7-11. I get a coffee and buy him a blueberry muffin. Later that day he stops by the office and thanks me. My supervisor says there is a difference between relating to the client and identifying with them. I’m not sure what the difference is. Some days I am a counselor, but I will always be a client.

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Abigail Frankfurt is a writer and artist. Her work has been published in The Yale Review, The Minneapolis Observer, The New York Times. Her artwork can be seen at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York City.